Posted
by
timothy
on Monday January 28, 2013 @06:46AM
from the so-if-you're-reading-this-go-to-bed dept.

jjp9999 writes "Recent findings published on Jan. 27 in the journal Nature Neuroscience may inspire you to get some proper sleep. Researchers at UC Berkeley found that REM sleep plays a key role in moving short term memories from the hippocampus (where short-term memories are stored) to the prefrontal cortex (where long-term memories are stored), and that degeneration of the frontal lobe as we grow older may play a key role in forgetfulness. 'What we have discovered is a dysfunctional pathway that helps explain the relationship between brain deterioration, sleep disruption and memory loss as we get older – and with that, a potentially new treatment avenue,' said UC Berkeley sleep researcher Matthew Walker."

See a sleep specialist. If you don't sleep well, there's probably a reason. For many overweight people, the problem is sleep apnea, caused by the airway being obstructed, which the body reacts to by waking up. A different sleeping position, a device worn over the mouth and nose to help keep the airway open, and/or losing weight can help. (I know about this from a friend who suffers from this problem, but isn't willing to do anything about it. And not coincidentally has been suffering from increasing Can't Remember Shit Syndrome.)

If he has sleep apnea, it can lead to a marked increase in his risk for heart attacks. With severe sleep apnea, your body senses your blood O2 saturation dropping and wakes you up in a panic thinking you're dying (seriously). That sort of 'night of 1000 deaths' leads to high cortisol levels and all sorts of other nasty things. I assume you probably already have, but urge him to at least have a sleep study done - that may show him that a simple CPAP machine can return his sleep patterns to normal. It quite literally saved my life.

He's had sleep studies done. They gave him a CPAP, and he just whined that it was uncomfortable, and fretted about it being embarrassing to wear to bed with someone (not exactly an immediate danger). The guy's got "issues".

Any decent prospective partner would understand. It's better to sound a little like Darth Vader than snore like a freight train.

Funny story - a female friend, my wife and I spent 3 weeks in Scotland, and this was the first time I'd taken my CPAP on a trip. We spent the night in Edinburgh on Prince's Street (the Old Waverly, I think it was). I was relegated to the outer bedroom, and the ladies got the one with the two beds.

I was shocked out of my mind the next morning when I opened my eyes to see some guy in

I made the Darth Vader comment - it's from the air leaving the little exit hole on the mask. Trying to talk with the CPAP on makes you sound more like Zuul [youtube.com] (at 00:13), not Vader.

Re: the fan ramp-up sound - I think what you might be hearing is the fan returning to normal speed after slowing when you exhale. All of the CPAPs I've used with that option have a setting to turn that off. I prefer no initial pressure ramp-up and no pressure release when I exhale (it makes the mask stay in place better).

I also was diagnosed with sleep apnea... I was routinely waking up 1-4 times every night thinking I had to pee... It turns out my brain was waking up my body due to low O2 saturation, then the conscious part of my brain was saying "why am I awake? It must be because I have to pee" so I would...

My sleep study showed that I stopped breathing 262 times in the short 4 hours of sleep with the recorder... So the 'cure' was CPAP which I just knew wasn't going to work for me... I went to a different sleep clinic and they prescribed a dental appliance which looks like this:

It brings the lower jaw forward which helps prevent constriction of your airway when you relax during sleep. It has an adjustment screw so you can fine tune it. You start with the screw all the way relaxed to become accustomed to wearing the appliance, and then slowly over time you turn it forward until you start to sleep well. Then you do a followup sleep study so they can compare and check the adjustment.

I can travel with it, no sore throat in the morning, no whirring next to the bed, etc.

The first night I had the appliance in, with the adjustment screw all the way relaxed, my wife kept waking up in a panic to check whether I was still breathing. I was no longer snoring and because that was a sound that was so pervasive in our marriage, she had trouble sleeping without hearing my snoring...

Now after two years, I consistently sleep through the night and get a solid 7-8 hours each night. I no longer feel a need to nap in the afternoons or evenings. I can't say my memory is back to normal, though... But I put that down to my advanced age.

After telling my dad about it, he got an appliance as well. He tried CPAP when he was first diagnosed but after a month or two of trying it, he was sleeping worse because of the damn machine and hoses and mask so he gave it up. The dental appliance changed his life. He's going on 18 months with it and his health has improved, his weight has improved, and he's finding it easier to keep his blood sugar under control.. The sleep clinic that initially prescribed and sold him the CPAP machine claimed to have heard of the dental appliances but said they didn't work so CPAP was the only solution. So he came into town and went to the clinic that I went to, to get his dental appliance.

So if you can't tolerate CPAP, then consider talking to the sleep clinic about the dental appliances. Note: they're quite expensive and they're not the same as the cheap "boil and bite" ones, which don't last very long and don't allow you to adjust the offset of the lower jaw.

Which is stupid. I myself have got sleap apnea and the first time I tried that CPAP device was the first time in years I felt actually rested in the morning. The difference in life quality is enormous - it was like I was a zombie before and now alive again. That feeling alive has helped me to pick up sports and to lose over 50 kg, the only thing I regret is not starting the therapy earlier.

Honestly, alcohol is exactly what I thought of when I read the summary. In college, I drank a lot more than I should have, and I would notice that the next morning I would occasionally have blurred memories (and occasionally, terrifyingly, lost memories) of things that had happened the previous day, *prior* to when I started drinking.

My hypothesis at the time was pretty much exactly what the summary to TFA says: I slept like crap (I was unconscious, but the quality of sleep was awful), and my brain couldn't

It's a matter of proportion. I drink a shot and a half, give or take, of Cruzan 151 every night before bed and it knocks me out but it's not so much that I'm hungover the next day. Before I learned the correct proportion, however, there were some mornings where I woke up with a headache.

I was diagnosed with apnea, but there were various delays in getting treatment. In that interval I "fell off the cliff" and found that in my fifties I had the energy level of someone in their eighties. (From caring for my mother, I had good experience of what that was like.) I didn't connect it with the apnea diagnosis at first but eventually getting on CPAP fixed the problem. The problems of sleep apnea can be deeper than suspected - don't look for just sleepiness.

Sometimes it's the other way around. When you experience oxygen starvation during sleep, you wake up in a panic and your bloodstream floods with cortisol. One of the things cortisol does is increase your appetite. In an indirect way, sleep apnea can be a contributing factor to obesity (or weight gain in general). I know when it became a problem for me about 7 years ago, my weight shot up 50lb in less than 6mo. My apnea was caused by environmental conditions, which I solved by moving to a new place. I still have 1 or 2 episodes per night, I've stopped gaining, but I'm not losing the weight, either. I've tried diet, exercise, both at the same time, for months on-end, and at most I'll lose 1lb in that time. Some weeks I'm actually able to sleep through the night consistently; I'll lose 5-10lb in one of those weeks, but it'll come right back a week later when the apnea kicks up again.

I do control my portion sizes, I rarely finish a meal (I almost always have leftovers in the fridge), I take care to eat a balanced diet and limit my intake of fatty foods (no cakes or fried bread products, 1 or 2 small pieces of candy every few days, I'll have a steak maybe once every couple of weeks so I don't start missing *actually* eating), I walk to work, I walk to lunch; hell, I'm in downtown Walnut Creek, I walk pretty much everywhere, and I live at the top of a 1000ft 45 degree incline. The problem is not dietary and it's not lack of exercise. Like I said, I start shedding weight fast when I'm able to sleep

My apnea "isn't severe enough to warrant treatment", so no CPAP or dental appliance for me, either. I'm only 180, so overweight but not obese, but I'd really like to get back down to the 132 I was at for 12 years before this problem came along.

Oh well, I guess if I wasn't such a lardass, I could sleep at night, right? Ignorant dick.

Good question. Rollerblinds to achieve maximum darkness, no LEDs shining in the room. Fresh air, fresh sheets. Comfortable temperature. Maybe watch an ASMR video [youtube.com] to relax before going to sleep. Eat a bit before going to sleep. Medication can be very helpful too. Just my two cents.

As a student, a large part of my work involves remembering. I have found that I need 8 hours of sleep – if I sleep less than that, I'm useless all day: I have trouble concentrating and usually don't get any studying done.

Others however, seem to be off fine sleeping only 3 or 4 hours a day. Sure, they are tired, but it doesn't impact their ability to concentrate in the same way. Any biologist / neuroscientists here who can explain this?

I'm actually like that. Non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome, that is. (I'm writing this as I'm winding down from my "day" at 8am, after waking up at 7pm last night.) I'm closer to a 26 hour cycle than a 28, though. Thanks for the link, I might try that out.

Most people's free running cycle is longer than the actual day. We all depend on various environmental cues to synchronize the clock. As you point out, modern life is nearly a perfect storm of disrupting those cues.

I have found that it's not just the sleep/wake cycle that it screws with. Depression can also 'magically' disappear with adequate sleep on a decent schedule with appropriate exposure to sunlight. I have to wonder how much of the health care crisis in the U.S. would just go away if we would return

People do spend too much time in front of the PC. I'm guilty of that myself sometimes. There are a few ways to limit the damage. Since I telecommute, I set up the work computer next to a window. I get occasional glare to deal with, but it's worth it to have the exposure to natural light throughout the day. I also take breaks from sitting there so I don't end up with long stretches at a time. It's amazing how helpful it is to just get up and do something else a few times during the day.

We need to start thinking of sitting at a computer for hours on end as dangerous and distasteful, like excessive drinking or smoking, I think, complete with some stigmatization of those who go overboard and active discouragement throughout society, including at work. We do that a bit with WoW nerds and the like, but all the people who zone out for 3+ hours a night on Wikipedia, TV-tropes, Facebook, Slashdot, Netflix, internet shopping sites, doing obsessive packrat-like downloading, playing less-nerdy games

The Siesta seems like a good idea as does bi-phasic sleep. The crazy polyphasic schedules sound like a carefully calculated assault on the brain. It seems to me that you end up not sleeping so much but instead spend much of your awake time making sure you don't miss your next sleep time. I have to wonder if all of that was summed up fairly if you wouldn't be more productive with a less extreme approach.

Fortunately, there is a really great way to tell if you're sleeping enough. If you wake before your alarm

As practical consideration, most of the world understands your sleep cycle.

Yet if you tell people that you actually need those eight hours of sleep to function properly you get ridiculed. Everyone expects you to function just fine on 5-6 hours per night, any more is seen by a lot of people as being a bit "lazy" (either going to bed "too early" or "sleeping in").

I'm not ashamed to say that anything less than seven hours per night on average completely messes me up, I can feel it the moment I wake up, I need more sleep or I will function poorly (a few months ago I wound up only gett

Not a clinical trial, but my experience from living in different apartments and staying in hotel rooms, as well as hearing comments from other guests. Good things that reduce the numbers of hours required to sleep:

1. Blackout curtains - make the room completely dark - not a single photon from a single street lamp, emergency light, security light, car headlight at night.2. Soundproofing / quiet area - you don't have other residents walking past drunk or with suitcases past your apartment or room, or other st

If I'm reading the source article correctly, it has a big typo that propagated to the slashdot post. The source article abbreviated non-rapid eye movement to REM. It is deep stage 3 (delta) non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep that is important to memory, not REM sleep.

Healthy adults typically spend one-quarter of the night in deep, non-rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Slow waves are generated by the brain’s middle frontal lobe. Deterioration of this frontal region of the brain in elderly people is linked to their failure to generate deep sleep, the study found.

I like to follow these types of stories. I lost all of my memory one morning when I was 19. The cause isn't clear. I was in an underdeveloped country at the time, so the medical facilities didn't exist to determine what had happened. (It might have been a delayed effect of a car accident I was in two years earlier.) It's also probably important to note that my ability to form new memories was also severely impeded.

I wonder a little bit about what "moving" a memory means. At least in my amateur study, memories aren't complete entities (like a file, database, etc). They are mixes of memories, the awareness of what has occurred, and associations, our integration of what we already know with what we are remembering. That's part of the reason people can have such differing memories of a shared experience. Some of that is about how memories are retrieved. In my study and experience, they are retrieved by these associations we make. That's why memory tricks involve making varied associations -- to song, to a mental or physical image, etc. For people who haven't learned those tricks, an association can be as simple as "I remember we met in a bar..." then the rest of the picture is pieced together.

I wonder sometimes if my having to learn different ways of "remembering" things will allow me to maintain a higher level of memory functioning into my elder years. I have to be very aware and purposeful about what I remember. I was in college when I lost my memory, so I had to learn very quickly how to perform in school without being able to learn in the conventional sense (I could not remember the beginning of a semester by the time it ended). So I focused much more on the integration of memories into my existing awareness (aka forming associations between new experiences and prior knowledge.) I still have a very poor memory retrieval in the classic sense, but I can still learn lessons well. It has just required a much higher level of sentience with regards to how memories are stored and what I hope to gain from a memory in the long term.

It seems to me you have somehow managed to implement a relational database type memory retrieval system.
Instead of direct associations between memories and triggers, you seem to have yours arranged according to first-order predicate logic.
Very impressive indeed.

I'll have to look up some of those phrases so that I can see how well they apply. I do try to make as many associations as I can. And I try to imagine how else I might use the information so that I can also think about how it might be referenced. But a lot of my life is working through configurations of associations until one triggers a memory (or I simply conclude that it is the most reasonable conclusion even if it didn't trigger a memory.)

Your experience sounds a lot like our current understanding of how memory works: small pieces of inter-related information are stored by their connections to pre-existing ideas, and recovered in a synthetic process of re-assembly.

I think this is news-for-nerds not so much because it is a science article, but more so because, for some reason, all of us who work in IT keep messing up with our sleep schedules (or at least have a tendency to). So it's interesting news.

I was going to say the same thing. Not news? I even have some vague recollection that it was specifically delta pattern sleep that's required. I don't remember seeing the acronym NREM though. It was just called delta pattern.

Perhaps the article says what's new in this study, but I can't read it. I've already blown my limit and read one article today.

I would say it has probably been known for centuries or more, even. This isn't the first time I see a study like this on slashdot : universally known fact of life discovered by a team of scientists (though, I don't remember what it was about!). I won't discard it as meaningless : it's pretty interesting to witness scientific findings, with all rigor and instrumentation techniques etc. rediscovering something your grand-grandmother could probably have told you.

But for me: some light physical activity during the day(yard work or such), a hot shower and a couple of adult beverages before bedtime, and a clear conscience go a long way. If all that fails, a couple of threads like this on/. will usually put me out like a midnight cigarette.

I'm actually only about half-joking here. When you have a newborn, you get practically no sleep for months at a time, and yet people still have multiple kids. Why? Because nobody clearly remembers those early terrible sleepless months!

I'm actually only about half-joking here. When you have a newborn, you get practically no sleep for months at a time, and yet people still have multiple kids. Why? Because nobody clearly remembers those early terrible sleepless months!

I was saying exactly this to my brother-in-law who just started parenting, the first five years is just one long blur. I'm not sure what's the bigger factor, PTSD or sleep depravation.

Can't people soundproof the rooms with the baby in? If it's because it needs attention, then you could still sound-proof it, but have a detection system which alerts just one parent (they can take it in turns, so every other night is a good sleep).

I was in a marriage with a man I absolutely loved with all my heart and soul and I thought he was a good guy, but he just up and quit the marriage, leaving with no real explanation as to what happened. Naturally, I slipped into deep stress and depression, I found myself lying awake every night for hours and hours only to get about 2 to 3 hours of restless sleep a night. I've been doing this for over a year now and each night I struggle to find restful sleep.

I try, but it still eludes me. Exercise to the point of exhaustion only barely helps. Sleep aids don't even phase me. Alcohol does virtually nothing, and frankly I've avoided it due to migraines that it can cause.

I believe that happiness is the best thing for sleep and a good memory. Because most happy people aren't usually depressed and less stressed out.

Sounds familiar, my sleep patterns went to shit after my divorce. The only thing I founds that helped is having a routine, in my case it's go to bed, read a book in dim lighting, when my eyes start to blur turn off the light.

If I don't actually go to bed I'll be up for hours watching TV or playing with a computer, once I fall into that it's hard to break out of.

If I don't read a book then my mind is still racing thinking about... well everything.

It seems that your self-esteem suffered with this divorce.In fact, I believe that you define your value within the eyes of others.In other words, if they quit you, it means that you worth nothing.You give too much credit to other people's opinions.

I strongly discourage you to use pills or alcohol, since they tend to create an addiction, and make your life miserable in the long term. They also won't solve your real problem, only the symptoms.

Keep your chin up.. Just remember that jerk isn't losing any sleep over you. He stopped caring about your sleep a long time ago.

It's not fun lying awake every stinking night wondering what the heck you did wrong to end up in that situation.It totally sucks waking up at 3am and feeling the same depressive cycle switching on again and again, when all you want to do is get some frigging sleep.

And all that time wasted, spent in a loop trying to process all the conflicting advice you've been given

I was going to post anonymous, but recovered my ancient log-in so that you'd at least have a "face" for this drive-by. I don't even know why I'm posting, other than my brother did something similar, but at least he had the minimum courage to tell his wife the reasons as he was leaving. I'd never been quite so disappointed in him when I heard he just walked away... So, what you wrote hit something in my heart of hearts, so, here goes random helpful internet guy...

I'm so sorry to hear how you were hurt. I don't know why people do hurtful things like that. There's no excuse for abandoning someone that cares for you and that you've cared for in the past.

I'm sorry the hurt is still with you. I hope you're getting help, and if not, PLEASE get help. Some may say it's appropriate for you to have problems while you "mourn" the loss of your loved one, but if you've been in so much pain that it STILL troubles your sleep, for over a year, that's not "normal mourning."

Your brain can do amazingly bad things to you, and like most brain disorders, it's really hard to realize that you may need help. The mind loves to lie to itself, to reassure itself that while things aren't "right," they're not *THAT* bad. But it might just be. You may need more than just *struggle* to get through this. I'm not talking meds (though they may help too, they did for my own issues), I'm talking a licensed therapist at the least, a shrink if you can get one.

This is a link [seculartherapy.org] to a project that looks to connect people with therapists who practice based on Evidence and published data. I'm specifically posting a link to non-religious therapists, not to cause trouble, but because even if you may be religious, and may indeed find a good religious therapist, it's also possible their beliefs may conflict with yours, and may cause more pain than balm. I think it makes sense to start with a therapist that doesn't even have religion as a component, then discuss introducing that as part of your therapy later, should you desire it.

As alone as you may feel, as worthless and petty as far, FAR too many people are, there are *good* people out there. People who can more than make up for the scumbags out there, who will trip over themselves to help you, if they just know you are in need.

If you're not sure you need help, if you think you're *probably* ok, or *mostly* ok, try to get help anyways... if you really are fine, than the worst that can happen is they agree with you, right?

This was a much bigger post than I intended, stranger/friend. And you may never see it or read it. I hope you do. I hope that you're not alone with your pain, and if you are, that maybe for a moment my words make you feel less so. And if you need it, I hope you decide my completely unsolicited advice is, instead of insulting, a kind-of tool, another way for you to help yourself.

If you're happy and relaxed, you sleep better, which helps you be happy and relaxed.
If you're miserable and stressed, you sleep worse, which helps you be miserable and stressed.
So much for self balancing systems.:/

I find that I sleep better after (trying to) meditate. It's not easy but gets easier with practice. The point of meditation is to 1. relax and 2. focus, which is an excellent way to prepare the brain for sleep.

The meditation method I'd suggest is to sit up straight (bad for your back and brea

I am sorry to hear that. I have had a similar experience, after a very painful breakup I went through the same process.

The thing that caused it was the fact that I had no idea why it happened. So my days were spent asking "why? why? why?" - this was not very productive, the inner voice had no reasonable answer except "I did something wrong". Then it became "What did I do wrong?".

What worked for me was the ability to understand what happened. I had to ask some really direct questions and get some really dire

But here's today's intriguing question: when are researchers going to notice the link between long-term sleep deprivation and (at least some forms of) Alzheimer’s Disease? I think that permanent damage can result from constant, chronic sleep deprivation.

Perhaps when the brain is flawed, then it stores the memories in the unflawed areas? Kind of like how you can block the use of bad sectors on a harddrive; they would be used if they worked correctly, but since they don't, they can be prevented from use and the unflawed sectors will be used instead.

Huh? Old people don't generally sleep more. They generally go to bed earlier - but they also generally wake up earlier, so end up sleeping the same amount of time or less - sleep apnea, insomnia, and other reasons for having trouble going into deep sleep are more common for the elderly.

Long and short term memories are very different beasts, I think that when you get old you're likely to keep almost all your long term memory but the short term ability gets poor or very poor. So in your daytime, you would have a lot less things to remember actually.

When old, you probably get back to much "ritual" behavior too (something very natural in the animal rein), i.e. waking up at a fixed time, doing similar errands in the morning, preparing soup at 7 PM (whatever your granny routine is).Then, all yo

Perhaps. But it sure screws with your short term memory. Possibly by messing up your ability to focus. You might make detailed observations of a bug crawling across the conference room table during a meeting. But it was the meeting you were supposed to pay attention to. And now you want to commit that to long term storage?

This is why stoners are so much fun to screw with. Distract them with something and hilarity ensues.